


Solstice

by GoldenThreads



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Ferdibert Week (Fire Emblem), M/M, Mutual Pining, Nipple Play, Restraints, Temperature Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:54:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21721273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/pseuds/GoldenThreads
Summary: There are reasons, many and dreadful, that the Summer and Winter Courts are doomed never to mix.Ferdinand's never turned down a challenge in his life.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 10
Kudos: 188





	Solstice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tieru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tieru/gifts).



> This is NOT what I expected to be writing for Ferdibert week but HERE WE ARE. All the inspiration/worldbuilding/glory/laurels go to [ally](https://twitter.com/Allyssinian/status/1201174147990269953) for this utterly gorgeous piece. Apparently you can't say "sad that their bodies are incompatible" without me taking that as a Challenge.
> 
> Writing this brought a fae curse upon my home and I humbly hope they accept this offering.
> 
> [Additional warnings: brief mentions of hunting/leatherworking, questionable fae morality]

  


* * *

  


**Winter Solstice**

A half-week of fall and straight on into winter, a clear breach of the seasonal pact. The autumn court cried for justice, spring and summer patrolled their borders, and all the while the fae of the winter court grew strong, haughty, uncaring for the cruelty such an early frost did to the lands. 

Not that Ferdinand particularly cared, either. It was that haughtiness that caught his eye and held him, the brutal superiority of Her Winter Majesty’s retainer as he walked the grounds, steps light and shoulders high, the way his horns glimmered beneath their adornments, icicles lengthening by the day, needle-sharp. Ferdinand woke again and again to memories of frozen lips, those horns branching to meet his own against a starless sky, ivy twisting riotous around his wrists. 

There was a reason Ferdinand flit through the winter court, defying all territorial claims, and this was not it. Hubert distracted him, chased him, questioned and tormented him, and all the while thought himself untouchable, as though Ferdinand were no more dangerous than a fawn, as though it were ice that would devour all in the end, just as their winter lay claim to the borderlands now. 

No more.

  


—

  


The righteousness of Ferdinand’s challenge lasted all of an afternoon tracking his prey through the winter woods, bleeding into indignation when the man finally turned, scowl fixed like someone had taken an ice pick to the ashen marble of his face. 

“Have you any idea the date?” Hubert hissed, fingers tangling behind his back and away from Ferdinand’s ever-friendly grasp. But where once disdain slipped free with every word, now there was something more forceful, a primal horror. “Get you _gone.”_

And Ferdinand tilted his head, smile twisting wild on his face even as the frost underfoot ached at his toes, and thought only, _oh._ Fear was a terrible rarity, yet fear it was. The other fae’s bloated self-worth extended even to this, that the force in him was anathema to all around, that the raw-lipped bloody frost he’d left on Ferdinand last time was a price, not a prize. 

Ferdinand grinned as he stepped forward and pressed his hands flat against the dark silk of Hubert’s waistcoat, palms dragging down along his sides in a soothing motion that only made the other fae shudder and shake. Such an invitation, with Hubert pinning his own hands down and away, with the unmarred tundra of his neck jailed by two opal buttons alone, with those proud eyes pierced with such longing.

“A day for gifts.” 

  


—

  


A day for surprises, Ferdinand should have said instead, which were always much nicer than the complexities of gifts. 

The hands were the tricky bit—as Hubert had told him, repeatedly, equally smug and distraught over the blackened frostbite on the tips of Ferdinand’s ears—but not insurmountable, as Ferdinand’s velveteen horns proved just as admirable at occupying Hubert’s grasping, desperate hands as his shimmering locks had. 

That bit in the beginning where Hubert struggled to keep his oh-so-frightening hands off and away had been its own adventure, too. The low warnings as Ferdinand’s teeth skated down his stomach, mouth and tongue long numb from shivering kisses, and Ferdinand laughing, always, _close, you say? To wringing my neck or painting my face?_ Those incredulous groans torn from Hubert’s lips with every inch of untouched flesh blessed by Ferdinand’s warm breath, shaking like a leaf in joyous spring, until finally he snapped and burrowed those ashen fingers into Ferdinand’s riotous mane, hips snapping up in silent plea.

Winter could last as long as it liked if this was the prize, Ferdinand did not think, for such things would be high treason at court.

Best to keep his clever tongue in working condition, lest he ever need to argue his case. A show of understanding to Hubert’s anxieties about all their incompatibilities and other such nonsense. Ferdinand would not risk himself unnecessarily, and in return, Hubert would sob on his fingers—two now, careless of the stretch when they could rub faithfully where Hubert most loved and dreaded them. The temperature became a little more bearable with each one he added, a fascinating discovery that Ferdinand couldn’t wait to chase.

Another day. For now, all Ferdinand needed was the warmth of Hubert’s shed cape bundled around him, the shimmer of dew collecting in the corners of Hubert’s too-warm mouth, gasping for pity, for relief, and the weight of Hubert’s cock on his lower lip, held there slack-jawed with such care as his tongue danced so many promises against the aching glans. Now and again his fingers curled just right, Hubert rasping with a pleasure that crested and broke with all the ponderous agony of an ice floe, and Ferdinand kissed away that precious reward.

The first thaw was always the sweetest. Why wait for spring?

  


* * *

  


**Summer Solstice**

“Your suitor ventured as far as my garden today.” The Queen’s fan worked faster than the steady drip of the icicles still clinging to the gazebo awning. “Shall I bewitch him into my footstool as punishment, or will you finally cease your many moons of brooding?”

Hubert was made for the dread silence of a midnight storm, the hushed winds as the snow rose higher and higher to smother the living lands, for the fatal plummet of ice-kissed birds from a clear sky, for a life that left no more than subtle tracks before the drifts swallowed up even those faint traces. Not for this discussion, surely.

“It would be such _fun_ to have a jester around again,” she added when he gave no answer.

That damn summer fae had feast enough at his own court; Hubert would not have him glutted on the winter court’s attention as well. The more reaction he earned, the more he would reach for, ever the vainglorious popinjay. The very idea of the Queen spending her precious focus so one so unworthy drew forth Hubert’s rasping words at last. “Don’t feed him.” 

A crystalline laugh, wavering with a kiss of force, and all those lingering icicles slipped free to puncture the snowbanks below. _“Feed_ him? Dear Hubert, the only food he seeks is _you.”_

  


—

  


Ferdinand fancied himself a hunter. Perhaps that was why he trespassed into other lands with such regularity, rightfully recognizing there could be no sport when summer’s bounty left his home teeming with game enough to trip over, no glory when each garland-laden buck ventured near to graze out of his own palm. In the winter lands, his footprints damned him wherever he strode, clover festering in the melt before ice crawled back up those dainty stems.

To find one’s prey in the dead of winter required a different skill set entirely, a constancy and patience without par. Hubert approached this new hunt with similar focus, mapping the overgrown borders of summer’s kingdom with bark lashed to the soles of his boots, his magic hushed as he traced Ferdinand’s weaving steps. These were the lands Ferdinand considered his own, his presence thick in every flourishing leaf and vine, and Hubert poached two milky-white fawns from its heart.

One for his Queen as recompense, to prove his loyalty in even this affair. She draped it in ribbons of lavender and gold and set it to wander her garden, a red-eyed specter as lonely as the strangled blooms. 

The other for gloves of the purest ivory. They fit his hands like the ghost of another’s skin.

  


—

  


Each piece meticulously planned: the date, when Ferdinand’s birthright would leave him nigh impervious to the worst of Hubert’s frost; the site, a lakeside grove cooled by the mountains’ chilly runoff, in case Hubert himself need retreat from the heat; the suit, Hubert covered neck to toe by the finest silks and satins ever touched by the Queen’s personal dressmaker, lace crawling high as his chin with no buttons for Ferdinand to outwit this time; and, finally, the trap—

All dashed to ruins the moment Hubert reached the grove and found his prey already sprawled there as tribute, golden in the light. 

A wonder Ferdinand had not charmed up a stone dais, some sacrificial altar of plush velvet, for the way he staged the scene. As Hubert approached, Ferdinand rose on his elbows in a way that set every supple curve of his broad chest and shoulders taut, every freckle a mouthwatering promise on that honeyed skin. The sunny buds and leafy tendrils that always adorned his horns had curled lower in an embrace that set Hubert’s mouth dry with envy, outlining the valley of his throat, the dark flush of a nipple, the soft trail of amber that dragged Hubert’s eyes down, down to the waist of Ferdinand’s breeches, first button already undone. To say the sun burned in Ferdinand’s gaze was an understatement of the highest order, for the sun at its worst brought only drought, illness, desiccation — not the sweat-slick revelry of immolation, Hubert’s entire world narrowed down to the singular desire to kiss Ferdinand’s skin until the heat consumed every last whisper of ice melt and longing.

“Have you come to return my gift?” Ferdinand purred, a god before his lowliest worshiper. 

The memory of those clever lips on him, glistening sweet, struck Hubert with a lash of smoldering arousal. A leash around his throat, tugging him closer—but no, no. He curled his fingers against his own thigh, breath stuttering in his chest, reaching for the words he had prepared—

Ferdinand’s eyes caught the movement, read the kiss of power, of restraint, in those too-familiar new gloves, and _oh,_ the smile before was nothing to the glory of him now, pupils blown wide enough to eclipse the sun. His own hands slid backwards in the earth, clover twirling between his fingers as all around him sought to show its piety, and by the time his shoulder blades hit the fragrant bed of wildflowers beneath him, the roots of a nearby oak had risen from the soil to pin Ferdinand’s wrists to the unyielding ground. 

Typical. Hubert could threaten to string him up in a desert, a wasteland, and between one breath and the next an entire forest of accommodating vines would sprout to allow it. 

Ferdinand would allow anything, invite _everything,_ if only Hubert would answer. 

“You are the gift,” Hubert allowed with a shallow sigh. “However I may wish to return your fool heart, I doubt you’re willing to stay where you belong.” 

Hubert pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, unfolded it and laid it upon the dewy grass with an efficiency that made Ferdinand’s lips quirk, and when Hubert knelt with his knees thusly defended against any dastardly grass stains, Ferdinand at once strained upward for a kiss.

Even through the leather, the chill of Hubert’s fingertips drew goosebumps against tender skin as they traced a path down Ferdinand’s sternum and gently pressed him back down. Hubert’s hand lingered against Ferdinand’s stomach, stark white against tanned splendor, the muscles fluttering beneath his palm as though this simple touch would have Ferdinand bursting into a flurry of hummingbirds.

“Then what did you bring?” Ferdinand asked, and it was laughter jittering in his stomach this time.

“What you love best. A challenge.”

  


—

  


Only Ferdinand could be more demanding, more oppressive, more blindingly insatiable than the summer sun itself. 

He squirmed at every whisper of Hubert’s breath against his skin, every brush of fingers, chasing sensation in every direction at once as heady adorations spilled from his untouched lips, scouring Hubert worse than the kisses ever could. 

“Shh.” Hubert sighed over one rosy nipple in a cloud of frost, drinking in the answering burn of that spit-slick peak as he sealed his lips around it once more. 

Why did he even bother to gentle Ferdinand at every turn, when the other fae moaned loud enough for all the neighboring courts to hear? To shush him would mean sacrificing a hand, and they were so at home roaming the dips between his ribs, the trails between distant freckles, distracted now and again by how beautifully Ferdinand begged when those leather-clad fingers pinched and tugged at the blooms of his chest.

“Please, _please,”_ Ferdinand gasped, arched taut as a bow as he pushed himself closer to Hubert’s sharp teeth, “Oh, sweetheart, your mouth, won’t you please—”

Someday Hubert would make the challenge a game of _silence._ His eyes flicked to those plush lips, that sly and welcoming mouth so eager for kisses, and sucked hard on the swollen flesh between his teeth instead, watching as Ferdinand sobbed his delight. 

A pity the solstice made Ferdinand’s mouth a sauna too searing to risk. A relief, too. Hubert could maintain none of his careful calculation, experimenting with time and temperature and reaction, with Ferdinand greedily choking on his cock.

Ferdinand jolted as a drip of ice from Hubert’s horns tumbled down against his breast. Now there was a thought. 

“My ravenous little lord.” Hubert’s lips brushed his lover’s collarbone with every hushed word, relishing a momentary vision of Ferdinand’s lips wrapped around a glassy length of ice. 

The heavy icicles that accumulated along Hubert’s crown were not decorative in the way Ferdinand’s charming daisies did little more than add whimsical flair to his ensembles. Heavy with his own magic, they helped regulate and restrain the leeching cold that screamed in his bones, and when snapped free they served excellently as weapons, sharp enough to carve a man in twain before the murder weapon evaporated to naught. 

He’d sharpened one to a pen’s delicate point earlier and drawn his devotions against the flushed canvas of Ferdinand’s cock, now pulsing desperate in a needy pool of spend and melt on Ferdinand’s stomach. 

To break off another length of ice and feed it to Ferdinand’s slack-jawed, achingly warm mouth was…appealing, in a way that had Hubert reaching down to readjust himself, but unacceptably dangerous. He sighed in a stinging hiss of frost, and when Ferdinand next gasped his name, Hubert slid two fingers into his open mouth in gracious appeasement. 

Ferdinand rewarded him with a teasing bite, digging his teeth into the buttery leather with a wanton moan, eyelashes fluttering a wild cadence as he leaned into every point their bodies touched. For all that Ferdinand was the one trussed up and squirming, he’d clearly won the trick. 

He won the next a few minutes later. Gone lax and pliant beneath Hubert’s roaming lips, he nearly managed to contort himself close enough to rub off against Hubert’s knee. Ferdinand swore mutinously, incoherently against his unyielding gag when Hubert sacrificed his remaining hand to pin Ferdinand’s hips to the soil and prevent further mishap.

_“Ferdinand.”_

Hubert followed the rebuke with a curl of his fingers and a sharp squeeze to the base of Ferdinand’s cock, reminding him of his place. He turned to shoot Ferdinand a sour, damning scowl, only to be caught by the victorious shine of those red-rimmed eyes, as though this, too, were a gift beyond bearing, to be spread between Hubert’s hands the sum total of all his dreams. 

As though all he’d ever wished to be was honeysuckle for the tasting.

  


* * *

  


Two moons passed, and still Ferdinand did not come waltzing through the winter lands to renew his suit. Shame festered in Hubert’s gut like the cursed coals of the Queen’s hearth, banishing all secrets and shadows with their glow yet allowing no warmth to thrive. His heart had nearly burned him alive, yet even the cold brought him no relief now.

Perhaps Hubert had…hurt him. He had been so careful, at first. Methodical. But every whimper, every prayer mouthed around Hubert’s fingers, every tear of frustrated rapture that slid down those freckled cheeks, all of it lit another candle beneath the fraying threads of Hubert’s control. In the end, he’d checked for frostbite, shaking and furious in his inspection as Ferdinand laughed another invitation to cuddle under the sated sun. 

Summer and winter did not, could not, mix. If this had taught Ferdinand his lesson, then that was for the best.

Hubert crept back to the borders of summer all the same. The lands he’d scouted only a few months earlier were foreign now, spilling lush beyond their bounds, as though their lord had lost all will to restrain them. Only by tracing the lake’s shore could he regain his bearings.

“And you must be his snowman.” A trickle of laughter from the shimmering foam. The sand gave beneath Hubert’s boots, rising to his ankles in an iron grip. 

Water nymphs, the one nuisance that never plagued his home. Ice was so much more reliable. 

Hubert bowed toward the center of the lake. “Pardon my trespass.”

“No, you are quite welcome.” A flicker of cinnamon tresses out in the waves, and then a moment later, the nymph herself circled around from behind him. Her wet palm traced the icy patterns of his cheek, then tapped it lightly, indulgent and superior. “We are all sick of his malingering.”

“…he is unwell?” Only a few hours of sun, and already Hubert’s voice had dried up in his throat.

The nymph tapped her lip. “To hear our Ferdie tell it, you left him a wound most grievous. He cannot even comfortably dress such a torment, let alone show his face at Court. The Summer Queen would—oh!”

She braced him by the shoulders, supporting his crumpled frame in whole. 

_A wound most grievous. A torment, an embarrassment, a source of Ferdinand’s suffering in his very own lands. Best he die here of heatstroke himself, to even the scale._

“Oh you silly snowman,” she laughed by his ear. “The drama of you both! Ridiculous.”

“Drama?” he snarled, swaying away from her touch even as his feet remained trapped.

She waved a hand. “You bruised him at best.”

Hubert frowned. Ferdinand had begged for such kisses, for a necklace bitten into his bared throat, and Hubert had no memory of allowing it. 

The nymph coughed, raised a pointed eyebrow, and made a sort of twiddly motion with her hands as she held them over her ample bosom.

Ah.

Better to have let the heatstroke take him, really.

With another bright stream of laughter, the nymph dragged her toe across the sand that trapped his boots, then pushed a satchel of fragrant leaves into his hands before he could escape. “Go bearing gifts, snowman. And consider…absence makes the heart grow fonder, the ice colder, the burn fiercer, the teeth sharper, blah blah, get the point?”

“I. Yes.”

“Good. Because if you two ever feel the need to _cool down_ in my waters, I’ll drown you both.”

“Noted.”

The nymph folded her fingers together with a smile. “Such a charmer, snowman. Now go charm. Inland. Biweekly. Chop chop.”

He ran.

**Author's Note:**

> Faedinand, reclined dramatically with an arm thrown over his eyes in despair: Hast thou ever heard the tale of poor Icarus, who flew too near the sun? Now I have lived it. But the reverse. The winter's embrace claimed me, and I have suffered too grievously for my love--
> 
> Dorothea: Have you considered Not thinking about your nipples??????? Fucking fae, honestly.


End file.
